Broward County, Fla., school officials portray as a great success their Obama administration-inspired program offering counseling to students who break the law, instead of having them arrested or expelled. They insist that it played no role in February’s school massacre by Nikolas Cruz. They also claim that in fact juvenile recidivism rates are down and school safety is up, thanks to the program.
The evidence tells a far different story.

Broward County juvenile justice division records, federal studies of Broward school district safety and the district’s own internal reporting show that years of “intensive” counseling didn’t just fail to reform repeat offender Cruz, who allegedly went on to shoot and kill 17 people at his high school. Records show such policies have failed to curtail other campus violence and its effects now on the rise in district schools — including fighting, weapons use, bullying and related suicides.

Meanwhile, murders, armed robberies and other violent felonies committed by children outside of schools have hit record levels, and some see a connection with what’s happening on school grounds. Since the relaxing of discipline, Broward youths have not only brazenly punched out their teachers, but terrorized Broward neighborhoods with drive-by shootings, gang rapes, home invasions and carjackings.

Schools are safer than they were in the 90s, and school shootings are not more common than they used to be, researchers say

“This is not an epidemic”
Mass school shootings are incredibly rare events. In research publishing later this year, Fox and doctoral student Emma Fridel found that on average, mass murders occur between 20 and 30 times per year, and about one of those incidents on average takes place at a school.

Tons of info, facts, and figures to go into battle with the tears and fears crowd.

James Gagliano, retired member of the FBI’s elite hostage rescue team, gave CNN THIS assessment of the Broward Sheriff’s Department’s performance on Feb 15, during a discussion of changes to protocols post-Columbine:

Something horrific broke yesterday – of course, the day AFTER the Orange County Sheriff blustered his anti-gun way through a mob-enhanced CNN townhall – that should have every single person in this country’s eyes crossed in rage.

…[Sheriff] Israel said the video shows Peterson arriving at the west side of Building 12 and taking up a position, but he didn’t go inside. Israel said Peterson “clearly” knew there was a shooter in the building and was outside for about four minutes. The shooting lasted about six minutes, Israel said.

When asked what the deputy should have done, Israel said, “Went in, addressed the killer, killed the killer.”

Peterson is mentioned as part of a 2016 social services agency investigation into Nikolas Cruz, the 19-year-old identified by police as the gunman. According to a Florida Department of Children and Families report detailing that investigation, Peterson was approached by investigators and “refused to share any information … regarding [an] incident that took place with” the teenager.

That same year, the sheriff’s office revealed Thursday, it was told about “third hand information” from a “neighbor’s son” suggesting that Cruz “planned to shoot up the school,” although the specific school was not listed. The sheriff’s office said a deputy contacted the caller, determined that Cruz had knives and a BB gun and sent the information to the school resource officer — presumably Peterson. It is unclear whether he investigated.

HOW badly did the Orange County Sheriff and the FBI blow MULTIPLE CHANCES to prevent this tragedy from ever beginning, less mind coming to the point of bodies in the hall:

‘School shooter in the making’: All the times authorities were warned about Nikolas Cruz

Nikolas Cruz’s dangerous and disturbing behavior was flagged repeatedly to authorities, both local and federal, over a span of two years starting in February 2016. But no one stopped him before he killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland. Here’s a time line of incidents where Cruz was reported to law enforcement. Many of the incidents involve the threat of a school shooting.

But the Orange County Sheriff blames the NRA.
The children at the CNN mobhall shout “You’re a MURDERER!!!” at Dana Loesch.
If you haven’t heard, Alamo, Enterprise and National car rental companies are withdrawing their NRA discount programs from LAW ABIDING AMERICAN CITIZENS…

Hi. Thanks for contacting us. Alamo, National, and Enterprise ended the program – effective March 26. John

I am shaking my head at all this talk of “children” having to “learn” to “talk” to the “different” kids now. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? “Cool kids” don’t talk to each other anymore at the lunch table, less mind take notice of the less than socially adept kid. They all are glued to their phones. The child who is IN that isolated position or, even worse, tortured at school because of his “differences,” real or imaginary, USED to be able to ESCAPE once the school day ended and the terrible gauntlet of a bus ride or lonely walk home was safely passaged. NOW, there IS no escape. The torture comes at your 24/7, reaches into that formerly safe space where frazzled, hurt feelings could be soothed and quieted to face the next day, the next round. There IS no respite for the weird, the outsider now. No healing. No chance to mature, get your feet under you and, hopefully, grow out of the terrific resentment and hate built up by being SO different in this newer world these kids exist in. It’s horribly sad and terrifically dangerous. No conversational skills, no empathy development, no coping mechanisms learned, and THAT’S for the regular “everyone gets a trophy” crowd.

All I ever see, even in a group of school girls walking down the street, is heads in their phones. No giggling, hands over their mouths secret sharing. No shrieks of silly horror between them, unless it’s about a momentary picture they share between them. Then back to the screens. With nary a word. No wonder they’re melting down in schools, mentally and sometimes murderously.

The Siamese twin elephant in the room is disintegration of parental skills enabled by/coupled with the rise of technology and the end result being foisted upon society.

…Maj. Roman Filipov’s Sukhoi 25SM fighter was struck by a portable surface-to-air missile as he flew low over opposition-held Idlib in northwestern Syria, according to the UK’s Telegraph.

The 33-year-old pilot managed to keep the plane in the air briefly but was forced to bail out after one of the engines failed and his flight controls became unresponsive.

Extremists from al Qaeda-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham opened fire on him after his parachute opened, but he made it to the ground and shot two of the rebels with his Stechkin pistol, the Express reported.

Dramatic video circulating in social media shows the fighters ducking as the gutsy aviator then shouts, “This is for our guys!”

He then pulls the grenade’s pin and blows himself up.

But, really, the only alternative to capture when facing Obama’s JV Team, considering their well cataloged horrific treatment of anybody and everybody NOT THEM.

Our encounter changed the day for me. While I tried to dive back into my liberal podcast, my mind kept being pulled back to the gas station. I couldn’t stop thinking about the man who called himself a “redneck” who came to our rescue. I sized him up as a Trump voter, just as he likely drew inferences from my Prius and RESIST sticker. But for a moment, we were just two people and the exchange was kindness (his) and gratitude (mine).

As I drove home, I felt the full extent to which Trump has actually diminished my own desire to be kind. He is keeping me so outraged that I hold ill will toward others on a daily basis. Trump is not just ruining our nation, he is ruining me. By the end of the drive, I felt heartbroken.

“Why I don’t give a shit about POTUS tweeting Kim…or any dictator for that matter.”

Last day or so my feed exploded with folks incensed over the God Emperor “not understanding foreign policy” to the level of inane utterances like, “How can you be making jokes? We could all die!” Either of these statements rather ironically point to the outright ignorance and/or purposeful expunging of intellect on foreign policy by those very people proclaiming the “Trump dumb” trope.

First, let’s address the strategic realities, as they impact the political realities:

North Korea (aka Norks), armed with Soviet armaments and tanks, waited for the US to start removing it’s troops on the Korean Peninsula, and for the South Koreans (Republic of Korea, aka ROK) to lose US monetary support and receive only low level arms support, surreptitiously blitzkrieging into the South in the end of June, 1950. Why is this important? Because it establishes who the aggressor is, then and now.

The current strategic reality in the intervening time, just shy of 70 years, is that the Norks have reinforced the 38th parallel in terms of hardened artillery emplacements, with mobile batteries being the norm further North. Conservative estimates right now put 400k rounds of artillery on civilian and military targets in the opening hour. There is absolutely no question that the Norks will target civilians, as they already have in prior engagements, to include open terror incidents. In those seventy years, the militarization of the border has increased at an ever more rapid pace, North of the border. US troops, on the other hand, have largely dropped in that time. Why is this important? Because it establishes that the US has continually backed off its footprint on the peninsula, to ever increasing Northern buildup, purposely pointed at threatening ROK civilian population centers (now with the advent of ICBM tech within the nation, US civilian population centers). It also establishes that more time has dramatically expanded the capabilities of the regime, regardless of political and economic embargo. Currently Nork capability to launch a nuclear assault against the US is limited and unlikely to be precision capable, but with their rapidly expanding capabilities, time is not an ally.

The political reality:

The Norks have been reliable in one thing alone and that is not abiding by agreements. A multitude of agreements from disarming, to ceasing research of weapons of mass destruction (chemical, nuclear, biological, etc.), have continually been broken. In every instance the Norks have leveraged a “we’ll do/finish this, unless you give X” to the tune of billions in foreign aid over a multitude of administrations. The Norks have continually been in violation of exporting conventional arms, missile technology, or even WMD tech to third parties, state or non-state. Nork uranium hexafluoride was shipped to Libya via Pakistan, in turn Syrian nuclear reactor tech was almost entirely Nork, for a few examples. In 2009 a shipment of chemical warfare suits bound for Syria were interdicted. Why does this matter? A tyrant regime that purposely targets civilians, and have literally bombed civilian airplane flights, is not going to hold back on giving a WMD to a third party group for a buck if it is at all possible.

The executive reality, the interplay between heads of State, is a different matter. The Kim family, for seventy years, has successfully neutered the US’ Teddy-like stance of “speak quietly and carry a big stick” on that particular stage. The US, under the onus of an appeal to emotion fallacy, continuously paraded, has allowed the Kims to repeatedly break agreements and expand their military capability. Why is this important? The Kims have pursued nuclear weapons specifically to continue a heritage of using threat over civilian populations in return for more money, which is then dumped into their military industrial complex. For the first time, we have a President that is outright saying the behavior is enough and threatening a response in kind. This has observably caught the Kim Jong-un government off footing, as they’ve had 70 years of threat with effectively no response from a US executive. This is easily observable with their threat to attack Guam, then President Trump’s rebuttal of “all options on the table” netting a tacking back in Nork threats on the international stage, with none of the planned test launch towards Guam or nuclear fire anywhere in the US.

The short of it is that propaganda out of the Norks is an everyday thing for the last seventy years. What’s changed is we’ve allowed them ample time to gain more ability to threaten civilians all over the globe. Now, we have a bunch of facebook pseudo-foreign policy types, most with no semblance of field experience, chiming in that we should //allow the Norks more time// while ceding them the stage to do so, thereby encouraging other similar regimes to action. Sounds like a solid plan!

I have family and friends spread throughout Westpac, and while I’m not in a hurry to have a fight that’s not necessary, there are some fights that don’t get better with time. Seventy years of pleading and playing politely has gotten us nowhere; it’s beyond time for a change in tack. That’s why I don’t give a shit about our President bluntly telling a tyrant that time might have granted him a toothpick, but we’ll respond in kind with a baseball bat; it has shown results before. Even if a conflict did break out, now is better than later. Allowing the Norks to hit the level where MAD theory actually applies is exactly what we will get under the argument of “be nice, maybe things will change.” The Cold War will look quaint by comparison.